of conscience, of religion, of opinion, expression, and to be
The Old Struggle for Human
Rights, New Problems Posed by
Security
Delivered on April 18, 2007 on the occasion of the conferment of
the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by the University of the
East, Manila* by Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno, Supreme Court,
Philippines
“Tomorrow begins in the East,”
trumpets the motto of this venerable
institution of learning. In his last moments
in Bagumbayan, our national hero Jose
Rizal stared at tomorrow in the eye, veered
his bullet-riddled body to the right and fell
lifeless on the ground — face turned
towards the rising sun in the east.[1] From
the cradle to the grave, Rizal consecrated
his life to fight for the human rights of our people.
Today, you will be certified as a walking intellectual.
Tomorrow, you will be looking at our people with a fresh eye.
I urge you to use your new eye to perceive the meaning and
nuances of our continuing struggle to protect and push to new
thresholds the human rights of our people.
The wisdom of hindsight informs us that human rights
stem from three bedrock rights: the right to life, the right to
human dignity, and the right to develop.[2]From the right to life
springs our right to own property, to health, to work, to
establish a family. From the right to human dignity flows our
right to equal treatment before the law, to freedom of thought,
recognized as a person everywhere. From the right to develop
comes the right to education, and to live in an environment that
allows all of our rights to flourish in full.[3]
There is no human without any right. The caveman and
the civilized man have the same natural rights. Human rights
inhere in all of us as human beings, as beings higher and
different from other creatures. Since they are innate to man,
since they are inherent to his being, these rights are
inalienable and cannot be taken away; they are inviolable and
cannot be waylaid by any might of man; their preservation is
an obligation shared by the rulers and the ruled alike.
Our history tells us that in this small patch of the earth, our
forefathers pioneered in planting the seeds of human rights
when it was far from being the fad and fashion of the day. On
May 31, 1897, they established a republican government in
Biak–na–Bato. It had a Constitution advance on political and
civil rights. With serendipity, its authors Felix Ferrer and
Isabelo Artacho embedded in it four articles which guaranteed
freedom of the press, the right of association, freedom of
religion, and freedom from deprivation of property or domicile
except by virtue of judgment passed by a competent court of
authority. They entrenched these radical ideals in 1898 when
Aguinaldo established a revolutionary government and
adopted the Malolos Constitution.
Then came our war against the United States. American
President McKinley sent the First Philippine Commission
headed by Jacob Gould Schurman to assess the Philippine
situation. On February 2, 1900, the commission reported to
the President that the Filipino wanted above all a “guarantee
of those fundamental human rights which Americans hold to
be the natural and inalienable birthright of the individual but
which under Spanish domination in the Philippines had been
shamefully invaded and ruthlessly trampled upon.” In
response to this, President McKinley, in his Instruction of
April 7, 1990 to the Second Philippine Commission,
provided an authorization and guide for the establishment of a
civil government in the Philippines stated that “(u)pon every
division and branch of the government of the Philippines …
must be imposed these inviolable rules…” The “inviolable
rules” included, among others, that no person shall be
deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
The “inviolable rules” of the Instruction were reenacted
almost exactly in the Philippine Bill of 1902, in the Philippine
Autonomy Act of 1916 or the Jones Law, and in the 1935
Constitution. The 1935 Bill of Rights was carried into the 1973
Constitution with a few changes, and finally in the 1987
Constitution. As an aftermath of the martial law regime of the
Marcos government, the 1987 Constitution, enshrined a Bill of
Rights which more jealously safeguards the people’s
fundamental liberties. In clear and unmistakable language, the
Constitution proclaimed as a state policy that “(t)he state
values the dignity of very human person and guarantees full
respect for human rights.” In addition, it has a separate Article
on Social Justice and Human Rights, under which, the
Commission on Human Rights was created.
The horrors of the World Wars warn us that the protection
of human rights is a duty we owe to generations to come. In
1945, the peoples of the United Nations (UN), declared in the
Preamble of the UN Charter that their primary end was the
reaffirmation of “faith in the fundamental human rights, in the
dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of
men and women and of nations large and small,” in order “to
save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”
The promotion of human rights is also the indispensable
predicate of peace and progress. For this reason, on
December 10, 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. Its two implementing covenants
are the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights. These instruments not only denounced
nazism and fascism, but also recognized that the “security of
individual rights, like the security of national rights, was a
necessary requisite to a peaceful and stable world order.”
The interesting question is what has happened to human
rights in this new millennium? The end of the Cold War ended
the bipolar world starring the West led by the United States
and the East led by Russia. The end result of that clash of
civilization is the emergence of a unipolar world dominated by
democracy as the political ideology and the triumph of
capitalism as the bible of economics. With communism out in
the cold, the world awaited with bated breath the dawn of
universal peace and order. But when peace appeared to be
within mankind’s grasp, 9/11 shattered to smithereens its
illusion. 9/11 gave birth to new realities on ground with grave
repercussions on the human rights situation in the world,
especially the most vulnerable sector, the poor who are many,
the many yet the most impotent.
On the universal level, 9/11 altered the face of
international law. As the worst victim of terrorism, the United
States led the fight to excise and exorcise terrorism from the
face of the earth. It pursued a strategy characterized by a
bruising aggressiveness that raised the eyebrows of legal
observers. The leader country of democracy did not wait for
the United Nations to act but immediately sought to search and
destroy terrorists withersoever they may be found. In less
polite parlance, the search and destroy strategy gave little
respect to the sovereignty of states and violated their
traditional borders. The strategy which is keyed on military
stealth and might had trampling effects on the basic liberties
of suspected terrorists for laws are silent when the guns of war
do the talking. The war on terrorism has inevitable spilled over
effects on human rights all over the world, especially in
countries suspected as being used as havens of terrorists.
One visible result of the scramble to end terrorism is to take
legal shortcuts and legal shortcuts always shrink the scope of
human rights.
These shortcuts have scarred the landscape of rights in
the Philippines. In March 2006, Amnesty International issued
a public statement expressing grave concern over reports of
an ongoing pattern of political killings of members of legal
leftist organizations in various provinces in the country. It also
stated that in the wider context of continuing nationwide
counter–insurgency operations against the New People’s
Army (denounced as terrorists) periodic human rights
violations, including arbitrary detentions, extrajudicial
executions and torture, continue to be reported. Aside from
them, community activists, church workers, lawyers,
journalists and others perceived as sympathetic to the
communist movement suffered violation of their human rights.
Not to be outdone, the NPAs are also reported to have
lawlessly retaliated against their opponents.
The escalation of extra judicial killings in the Philippines
has attracted the harsh eye of advocates of human rights. The
UN Commission on Rights has sent Prof. Alston to look at the
Philippine human rights situation. Some members of the
International Parliamentary Union are in town for the same
purpose. Their initial findings are not complementing to our
Constitutional commitment to protect human rights.
As young graduates, you may be asking yourself the
relevance of these ongoing violations of human rights to your
life, especially as you embark on your journey to improve the
economic aspects of your life. I submit that the fight against
terrorism and the battle to preserve human rights have high
impact on the right of young people to live with dignity. One of
its ill–effects is the massive displacement of young people in
areas where the fight against terrorism tramples on human
rights. These young people are compelled to migrate to seek
greener pastures in hostile environments and, worse where
they find their human rights subjected to new abuses with near
impunity. Figures show that this problem of displacement will
get worse in the coming years because of the galloping growth
of the youth population. The United Nations predict that some
138 countries will have growing “youth bulge”; its calamitous
consequence is that youth unemployment will skyrocket to
record levels with the highest rate in the Middle East and North
Africa. The UN findings further reveal that at least 60 million
people aged 15–20 will not be able to find work and twice as
many, about 130M, cannot lift their families out of poverty. It
will not take a prophet to predict that countries that cannot give
decent life to their young people will serve as incubators of
extremism that may end up in terrorism.
And this leads me to the proposition that we need to give
a broader, innovative view on our efforts to protect the human
rights of our people which should consider our distinct social,
economic and political context. Defying the cult of conformity human rights. The scholar Michael Renver hits the bullseye
and comfort, I submit that this view should consider the with the following analysis:
following facts and factors: … terrorism is only symptomatic of a far broader set of deep
concerns that have produced a new age of anxiety. Acts of
One. Terrorism is just one means of violating our human
terror and the dangerous reactions to them are like
rights, especially our right to life itself, and should not consume
exclamation marks in a toxic brew of profound
our entire attention. Often, terrorism attracts universal
socioeconomic, environmental, and political pressures —
attention because of its cinematic impact — the shocking
forces that together create a tumultuous and less stable world.
violence, the bravado of the villains, the heroism of the victims’
Among them are endemic poverty, convulsive economic
rescuers, the sickening loss of lives and property and the
transitions that cause growing inequality and high
dominance of the animal in man. Terrorism is terrible enough
unemployment, international crime, the spread of deadly
but the mindless, knee jerk reaction to extirpate the evil is
armaments, large–scale population movements, recurring
more discomforting. The quickie solution is to unfurl the flag,
natural disasters, ecosystem breakdown, new and resurgent
sing the national anthem and issue the high pitched call to
communicable diseases, and rising competition over land and
arms for the military and the police to use their weapons of
other natural resources, particularly oil. These “problems
destruction under the theme victory at all cost. To put
without passports” are likely to worsen in the years ahead. …
constitutional cosmetics to the military–police muscular
They cannot be resolved by raising military expenditures or
efforts, lawmakers usually enact laws using security of the
dispatching troops. Nor can they be contained by sealing
state to justify the diminution of human rights by allowing
borders or maintaining the status quo in a highly unequal
arrests without warrants; surveillance of suspects; interception
world.
and recording of communications; seizure or freezing of bank
deposits, assets and records of suspects. They also redefine
Today and yesterday’s broadsheets bannered the news
terrorism as a crime against humanity and the redefinition is
about the stranglehold of poverty in the Philippines. The World
broadly drawn to constrict and shrink further the zone of
Bank says that about 15M or 19% of Filipinos survive on less
individual rights. If there is any lesson that we can derive from
than $1 a day. Our National Anti Poverty Commission disputes
the history of human rights, it is none other than these rights
the figures and claim that only 10.5 M Filipinos live on $1 a
cannot be obliterated by bombs but neither can they be
day. To the unsophisticated in the esoterics of economics, this
preserved by bullets alone. Terrorism is a military–police
is a distinction without difference for the cruel fact is that
problem but its ultimate solution lies beyond the guns of our
poverty stalks this land of plenty and hunger is still the best
armed forces.
food seasoning of its people. In poor countries, it is poverty
that truly terrorizes people for they are terrorized by the
Two. In fighting terrorism, let us not overlook the non–
thought that they will die because of empty stomachs and not
military aspects of our national security and their impact on
that they will lose their lives due to some invisible suicide
bombers. In poor countries, it is also poverty that renders the
poor vulnerable to violation of their rights, for the poor will not
vindicate their rights in a justice system that moves in slow
motion and whose wheels have to be greased with money.
And would any dare to doubt, that our national security and
our human rights are more threatened by the fear that we face
an environmental collapse if we do not take immediate steps
to save our seas and our forests from the despoliation to
satisfy the economic greed of the few. Again, the realities may
be uncomfortable but let the statistics talk and they tell us that
in year 2000 for example, 300,000 people all over the world
died due to violence in armed conflicts but as many people die
each and every month because of contaminated water or lack
of adequate sanitation.
Three. The threats to our national security and human
rights will be aggravated if we have a state, weakened
internally by a government hobbled by corruption, struggling
with credibility, battling the endless insurgence of the left and
the right; and, by a state weakened externally by pressure
exerted by creditor countries, by countries where our trade
comes from, by countries that supply our military and police
armaments. A weak state cannot fully protect the rights of its
citizens within its borders just as a state without economic
independence cannot protect the rights of its citizens who are
abroad from the exploitation of more powerful countries.
Fourth and lastly, the business of safeguarding our
national security, the obligation of protecting human rights is a
burden shared by all of us. It is not only the military that should
tackle our problem of security for it is our security that is at
stake, not their security. Security interest is a collective interest
where everybody has a significant stake. In the same vein, the
rich and the powerful should not consider the protection of the
rights of the poor and the powerless as peripheral problems
just because for the moment their own rights are
unthreatened. Sooner or later, they will find that they who
default in protecting the rights of the many will end up without
rights like the many. The apathy of those who can make a
difference is the reason why violations of human rights
continue to prosper. The worst enemy of human rights is not
its non believers but the fence sitters who will not lift a finger
despite their violations. “If we have learned anything from
September 11” wrote New York Times, columnist Thomas
Friedman, “it is that if you don’t visit a bad neighborhood, it will
visit you.”
Our work of protecting human rights is not yet finished.
With the incursions and threats of incursion to our human
rights at this crucial moment in our history, the clarion call to
each one of us is to consecrate our lives to the great cause of
upholding our human rights. When Rizal turned his face
towards the rising sun, he saw hope in a heroic people
carrying on the fight. Let us not allow the shadow of ignorance,
indifference or indolence eclipse this hope so that we may
continue to see a tomorrow begin in the East.
Thank you and again, congratulations.